The Olympics of Humanitarian Conferences: Digital and Innovation Takeaways
In December, representatives from across the global Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement attended the global 5 day conference in Geneva — a quadrennial gathering (I had to google ‘every 4 years’ — best to think of it as the Olympics of the Humanitarian sector) and a unique opportunity to share learnings and insights from around the globe.
The theme of the conference was ‘Act Today. Shape Tomorrow’ — focused on improving the lives of people affected by armed conflict, disasters and other emergencies.
Whilst the digital and innovation teams work closely with our partner organisations throughout the year, this was a great opportunity to join the conference for a punchy 24 hours of discussions with colleagues in person. Below is just a small glimpse of the great work on display, primarily looking at digital, innovation and GIS.
For ease I’ve grouped them broadly into ‘Education & Advocacy’ and ’Data’.
Education and Advocacy
With the exciting plans to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the British Red Cross in 2020, office refreshes, supporter experience work and the work to make our education offer more immersive I was particularly drawn to the below. They each made clever use of existing technology to both educate and build empathy.
Virtual Reality
The International Committee of the Red Cross / Red Crescent leads on a VR Centre of Excellence for the movement. To date, the work with the British Red Cross has primarily focused on first aid training, but at the Conference it was exciting to experience 2 further examples:
VR for earthquake preparedness
In Seoul, the team have worked to create a simulation of an earthquake in a high-rise apartment. The experience was slick, with robust, near-time feedback and some nice touches to make it more realistic and immersive e.g. needing to duck under a table and to avoid smoke in the building.
Immersive VR to bring the refugee experience to life
This VR experience (developed in partnership with the Danish Red Cross) which told the story of the refugee experience in Syria. The style was a 1–1 discussion taking place on a red bench with various refugees telling their story. While the content was informative it was the context which really impressed me.
In one example, you sat on a red bench (which reflected a bench in the video), placed the headset on and then turned to the person in the video. In another, you were in a booth, which changed temperature depending on the setting in the video e.g. sweltering hot when sat with the young refugee under the baking sun without anywhere to seek shelter. I was very skeptical as to the impact of these changes, but they made it much more immersive (note to self: be less cynical).
Wall of stories
I couldn’t help looking at this and getting excited about how simple yet enticing it was. The Burkina Faso office had worked with the team in Monaco to help bring to life the impact of the work across the country. Whilst it included short VR videos of programs and offices in Burkina Faso, people were equally drawn to the storytelling boards and short videos from staff, volunteers and beneficiaries. Simple, elegant and engaging. Think it’s clear I’m angling for the same in our offices/shops 😊
Brothers Across Borders
Developed by the Turkish Red Crescent this is an immersive online story which consists of a series of decisions with a refugee must make to settle into a new country. A simple concept, it really helped hammer home the every day decisions facing those involved e.g. as soon as you cross the border you have to choose to pay for a motorbike to help with a journey or protect your limited cash by committing to walking 12 hours in the baking sun to the next town. It’s well worth taking a few minutes to experience.
Humanitarian Crisis: Digital Dilemmas
This was an exhibition space outside the main conference space and whilst it was a large installation, the content and premise was again a clever use of ubiquitous tech. You were shown a short video about a natural disaster and then took on the role of someone who was separated from their family — having to make decisions about your use of technology and the potential implications. It tackled complex issues such as: ID registration post disaster, posting information about vulnerable individuals on social media and the potential backlash for those at risk and loss of sensitive data.
TikTok
It was also great to meet the ‘TikTok for good’ team and discuss about how various offices around the world are using the platform to engage people in the global movement. The British Red Cross recently launched a channel and had great success using it to launch the refreshed First Aid App (over 10,000 likes and counting) — worth also checking out the latest clips supporting the ‘Shop Drop’ campaign.
Data
Missing Maps
It was fantastic to see Melanie Ecke from Heidelberg University representing the Missing Maps project with colleagues from the German Red Cross. Missing Maps is an open, collaborative project to help map areas where humanitarian organisations are trying to meet the needs of vulnerable people around the world. This remains of the most exciting examples of the tech for good that I’ve seen. Whilst not perfect, I agree with the Guardian’s description that this is nothing shy of being the ‘Human Genome Project for Development’ (s). It’s great to see more members of the movement joining up, but there is still plenty of opportunity to scale this. To learn more about the GIS work at the British Red Cross check out the blog or this article about their work in the DRC.
510
Alongside the Missing Maps stand was representatives from both the Malawi office and 510 (the data scientists at the Dutch Red Cross). They carry out a broad range of work, but were showcasing their work in Malawi using social media scraping to better understand the impact of the organisation’s work at the grassroots level across the country.
Forecast based Financing
It was great to connect with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre and their use of GIS — you can find out more about the type of work they do below, from the 2019 HOT Summit
In addition to these stands, there was a plenary focused on ‘Humanitarian Action in the Digital Era’, set up and chaired by Heather Leson (Data Literacy Lead, IFRC). This was a great opportunity to hear about the work across the movement as well as the broader changing landscape and associated ethics.
The speakers included:
- Samar Abou Jaoude talking about their use of digital in the Lebanese Red Crescent
- Kpawuru Sandy (Secretary General of the Sierra Leone Red Cross), talking about the use of mobile data collection and GIS to enable volunteers to register flood victims as well as digital inclusion.
and our very own Rosie Slater-Carr who talked about the exciting Digital Transformation and Data journey we’re currently on. She showcased the role of partnerships such as the work with Microsoft in Education, digital transformation of our mobility aids service as well as the critical role of data governance and cyber security.
It was a great 24 hours and we even managed to cram in some side meetings with friends in the Missing Maps community and at the French Red Cross Innovation Team — catching up on the latest from their social innovation accelerator.
A huge shout out to all those involved in running the event — it was clear a lot of work had gone into it. A special thank you to Heather Leson for continuing to champion Digital and Data at all levels of the global movement — hero.
Any questions — don’t hesitate to get in touch!
